AlterSpark Consulting

Oxfam GB’s M&E advisors, Simon Starling and Claire Hutchings, and the two external evaluators, Dr. Brian Cugelman and Eva Otero, will discuss the institutional and methodological challenges of assessing a complex global campaign, and describe both the efforts to improve real time strategic learning during the campaign, and the methodology developed to address the evaluative questions posed by the external evaluation.

A recent report by JupiterResearch indicates that e-mail marketing spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012. Spending on retention e-mail will more than double during that period and account for over half of total e-mail marketing spending in 2012. Acquisition e-mail marketing will grow more somewhat more slowly, with most spending in that category going toward sponsorship (for example, ad-supported newsletters).

We have all heard that substance is more important than presentation; and by extension, it could be argued that website content is likely to be judged on the basis of what it expresses, not how ideas are visually dressed up. Although substance is important, it is surprising how much additional influence superficial trappings contribute to users’ perceptions of web content.

A report by JupiterResearch suggested that 33 percent of European online advertisers plan to launch their own profiles on social networking sites over the following year. However, just 24 percent of advertisers using such “engagement” tactics measure whether users interact with their online ads.

“As marketers increasingly try to reach consumers through social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion, they should turn to their online ad agencies for help gauging the success of these efforts,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. “In turn, agencies and ad servers must develop benchmarks and proxies to discover and prove the relationship between technology-based measurements and traditional brand impact surveys.”

While working for the United Nations, in 2002, I visited three organizations that operated top class websites: ELDIS, OneWorld.net and SciDev.net. Each of them had a reputation for excellent news services, publication quality, knowledge management and above all—buzzing online communities. The purpose of my mission was to research their success secrets in order to guide our organization through the process of developing our own global web project. After three days of meetings, which resulted in volumes of notes and technical details, all our discussions boiled down to just eight simple principles, which are summarized below.